Uniqueness of the core for chain-complete ordered sets (Q5929974)

Let \(P\) be an ordered set. A retraction is an order-preserving map \(r:P\rightarrow P\) such that \(r^2=r\). If \({\mathcal R}\) is a class of retractions, then an ordered set \(C\) is called an \({\mathcal R}\)-core iff \(C\) has no nontrivial \({\mathcal R}\)-retraction. It is known that for finite ordered sets several notions of \({\mathcal R}\)-cores coincide, but this is not the case for infinite ordered sets. The author studies the \({\mathcal C}\)-cores, where \({\mathcal C}\) is the class of all comparative retractions, i.e. retractions for which \(r(p)\leq p\) or \(r(p)\geq p\) for all \(p\in P\). He proves among others that the \({\mathcal C}\)-core of a chain-complete ordered set is unique up to isomorphism if it exists. Further he shows that for a certain class of retracts there are ordered sets such that the corresponding cores need not be unique.